James Blish's Cities In Flight
Star Trek
Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Technic History and Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy
(This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of future history series. We have done that often enough before.)
Of these five series, three are written by Poul Anderson and in no way exhaust his future historical works. Further, the Technic History continues to strike me as richer and more detailed than any other such series despite its apparent simplicity - van Rijn, Falkayn and League followed by Flandry and Empire. The series is considerably more than that with other installments set before, during, between and after the two main periods. In fact, I was rereading the Harvest Of Stars history but was somehow diverted into reconsidering the Technic History.
We will probably return to The Stars Are Also Fire soon but first I must go out on other business this evening. Real life continues to interrupt fiction.
2 comments:
I think the Technic history "feels" bigger because of its mixed origins -- folding Flandry and van Rijn together, for example.
That's more the way actual history works; it's not "smooth", it's full of surprises and twists and unexpected branchings.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Not an exhaustive listing of "future histories"? Understood, but I thought of Larry Niven's Known Space stories, Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium timeline, or S.M. Stirling's alternate universe Draka series. And others can be added, such as Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind tales.
Mr. Stirling: Good points! It was an ACCIDENTAL impulse on Anderson's part to link his Dominic Flandry stories with the ones featuring Old Nick by mentioning "Polesotechnarch van Rijn" in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS. That too led to unexpected twists and surprises!
Ad astra! Sean
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